Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 1.djvu/765

Rh , for instance, burdens a wife worse than a husband, owing to the present state of society. It is not the fault of the statute-book, and no change in the duration of marriage would alter that inequality.

The reason why I object so emphatically to the introduction of the question here is because it is a question which admits of so many theories, physiological and religious, and what is technically called "free-love," that it is large enough for a movement of its own. Our question is only unnecessarily burdened with it. It can not be kept within the convenient limits of this enterprise; for this Woman's Rights Convention is not Man's Convention, and I hold that I, as a man, have an exactly equal interest in the essential question of marriage as woman has. I move, then, that these series of resolutions do not appear at all upon the journal of the Convention. If the speeches are reported, of course the resolutions will go with them. Most journals will report them as adopted. But I say to those who use this platform to make speeches on this question, that they do far worse than take more than their fair share of the time; they open a gulf into which our distinctive movement will be plunged, and its success postponed two years for every one that it need necessarily be.

Of course, in these remarks, I intend no reflection upon those whose views differ from mine in regard to introducing this subject before the Convention; but we had an experience two years ago on this point, and it seems to me that we might have learned by that lesson. No question -Anti-Slavery, Temperance, Woman's Rights--can move forward efficiently, unless it keeps its platform separate and unmixed with extraneous issues, unmixed with discussions which carry us into endless realms of debate. We have now, under our present civilization, to deal with the simple question which we propose-how to make that statute-book look upon woman exactly as it does upon man. Under the law of Divorce, one stands exactly like the other. All we have asked in regard to the law of property has been, that the statute-book of New York shall make the wife exactly like the husband; we do not go another step, and state what that right shall be. We do not ask law-makers whether there shall be rights of dower and courtesy-rights to equal shares-rights to this or that interest in property. That is not our business. All we say is, "Gentlemen law-makers, we represent woman; make what laws you please about marriage and property, but let woman stand under them exactly as man does; let sex deprive her of no right, let sex confer no special right; and that is all we claim." (Applause). Society has done that as to marriage and divorce, and we have nothing more to ask of it on this question, as a Woman's Rights body.

, of New York City, seconded the motion of Mr. Phillips, and said that she wished the whole subject of marriage and divorce might be swept from that platform, as it was manifestly not the place for it.

said he fully concurred in opinion with his friend, Mr. Phillips, that they had not come together to settle definitely the question of marriage, as such, on that platform; still, he should be sorry to have the motion adopted, as against the resolutions of Mrs. Stanton, because